Antoine Claudet, A Figure of Photography, 1839-1867
Year of Dissertation:
2010
Up to now, the early decades of nineteenth-century photography have been narrated in terms of "great" individual achievements and have tended to characterize the histories of photography in England and France as separate but parallel chronological paths. Equally, scholars have usually split their object of study between two opposite disciplines: that of science and that of art. I propose instead a lateral approach that considers the ways in which both photography and individual photographers interconnected within an expanded network of international cultural forces, primarily commerce, technology, science, and art. I aim to do this through a close study of the career of Antoine-François-Jean Claudet (1797-1867), a French-born photographer operating a daguerreotype portrait studio in London from the early 1840s to the late 1860s.
Angels in the Americas: Paintings of Apocryphal Angels in Spain and its American Viceroyalties
Year of Dissertation:
2009
Advisor:
Eloise Quinones-Keber
Around the mid seventeenth century paintings of individual angels became popular in the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain (essentially present-day Mexico and Central America) and the viceroyalty of Peru (originally most of South America excluding Brazil). However, the names and representations of individual angels found across the Spanish Empire do not correspond to the few narratives that appear in the Bible, which only mentions the angels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael by name. Some of these series of paintings include angels labeled as Jehudiel, Barachiel, and Uriel, who are mentioned in Jewish texts such as the Talmud and the Cabala, as well as other texts written around the first century but considered apocryphal or non-canonical by the Catholic Church, such as the Book of Enoch. Although these images were relatively popular in Spain and Mexico, their representation was far more abundant in South America.
The Politics of Scholarship: College Art Association and the Uneasy Relationship between Art and Art History 1911-1945
Year of Dissertation:
2011
Advisor:
Patricia Mainardi
This dissertation examines the critical role that the College Art Association (CAA) played in the early development of art history and studio art education as academic disciplines in U.S. colleges and universities. Although CAA initiated a variety of projects after its inception in 1911, this study focuses on the association's journals, specifically the Bulletin of the College Art Association, The Art Bulletin, Parnassus, and College Art Journal. Serving as journals of record for art and/or art history, these publications functioned not only to provide an ongoing exchange of ideas related to the visual arts in higher education, but also to validate authorities and scholars, particularly art historians, and their academic institutions. As a result, certain individuals and schools became prominent in the visual arts. My study therefore addresses not only the histories of art history and studio art, but also the relationship between CAA and its supporting institutions.
Colombian Artists in Paris, 1865-1905
Year of Dissertation:
2010
Advisor:
Katherine Manthorne
ABSTRACT
Philosophers, Artists and Saints: Ernst L. Kirchner and Male Friendship in Paintings, 1914-1917
Year of Dissertation:
2009
This dissertation emphasizes the profound role of Friedrich Nietzsche's early publications on the artist Ernst L. Kirchner's theories and artwork in contrast to interpretations that focus on the overriding influence of the philosopher's late work Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
The Legacy of Constructivism in Poland: Geometric Abstraction Before and Behind the Iron Curtain
Year of Dissertation:
2009
Advisor:
Rose Carol Washton Long
This dissertation situates the legacy of Constructivism in Polish painting during the 1920s and in the mid-1950s, both before and behind the Iron Curtain. The material and ideological conditions of geometric abstract art are examined within the context of the East and West and across the pre- and postwar divide. I address the troubled reception of Constructivism through the prism of the artist Henryk Stazewski (1894-1988), one of the key contributors to the history of Polish art before and after World War II. If during the prewar years Stażewski attempted to invest painting with collective, universal, and international force, in the postwar period he choreographed the process of reception by exhibiting his works at home. I argue that Stazewski was aware of the ambivalent status and depoliticization of geometric art rooted in Constructivist aesthetic, and wanted to restore its socially constructive and political dimension by - paradoxically - isolating himself in an already isolated state.
John Martin (1789-1854) and the Mechanics of Making Art in a Commercial Nation
Year of Dissertation:
2010
Advisor:
Patricia Mainardi
This dissertation reinterprets the career of the English artist, John Martin (1789-1854). Challenging the popular characterization of him as an apocalyptic visionary opposed to modern commercial and industrial society, this study argues that Martin, in fact, was the only major artist of his time to speak out in favor of the modern science of political economy and its core concepts of competitive individualism, self-interest, and technological innovation. While many of Martin's artist contemporaries incessantly - and futilely - petitioned the government for financial assistance for "historical painting" on the grounds that state protection was necessary if the highest category of painting (according to the civic humanist theory of art) was ever going to flourish in commercial Britain, Martin argued that "historic painting" was "dead as an art," and continually adapted his style, media, and subject matter to meet the demands of the art market. This dissertation contends that once we consider Martin's career from the perspective of someone who believed adamantly in modern political economy, his status in the history of British art as a Romantic visionary who believed that modern commercial society was immoral and corrupt will fall away.
Improving the Public: Cultural and Typological Change in Nineteenth-Century Libraries
Year of Dissertation:
2009
Concurrent with New York City's emergence during the nineteenth century as the leading financial and cultural center in the United States, the city's public library architecture underwent a transition from buildings designed in romantic revival styles to monumental, neoclassical edifices that were intended by their architects and patrons to rival municipal libraries in other cities. New York's Astor Library, founded in 1848, was the first public library in the United States, and although its Romanesque Revival architecture was not a model for later libraries, its existence spurred the establishment of other public libraries. Before then access to all other libraries in the city required either membership in a particular group, such as a trade union, or a fee. The Neo-Grec design for the Lenox Library, founded in 1870, pushed public library design toward that of other emerging cultural institutions such as art museums in that it used similar forms. These two libraries, along with $2.5 million provided by the Tilden Trust, were consolidated in 1895 to form the New York Public Library. The public hoped that the new library would improve civic life by amassing a great collection and making it available to all, regardless of age, sex, or country of origin. These three institutions are the basis of this study of the library type as the embodiment of larger developments in the nineteenth-century architecture and culture of New York City. In this dissertation, I examine the development of the public library type--which entailed debates about both function and style--against the backdrop of New York's emergence as a world-class city.
Arte povera in Turin 1967-1978: Contextualizing Artistic Strategies during the Anni di piombo
Year of Dissertation:
2010
This dissertation presents an original analysis of four artists based in Turin, Italy: Giovanni Anselmo (b. 1934), Mario Merz (1925-2003), Giuseppe Penone (b. 1947), and Gilberto Zorio (b. 1944). Although these sculptors are ordinarily considered either individually or within the context of the 1960s-70s movement Arte povera, focusing on the sub-grouping reveals historical, tactical, and thematic connections that are otherwise unapparent. Their specific careers evolved within the social, artistic and intellectual context of Turin during a time of great political upheaval and philosophical foment. This study contributes to a new understanding of engagement by these four artists with Italian aesthetics and politics, and presents a framework through which to study Arte povera more generally.
The Search For The Sublime Irish Landscape: The Provinces Versus The Metropolis In The Work And Lives Of Francis Danby, James Arthur O'Connor, and George Petrie
Year of Dissertation:
2010
Advisor:
Patricia Mainardi
THE SEARCH FOR THE SUBLIME IRISH LANDSCAPE: THE PROVINCES VERSUS THE METROPOLIS IN THE WORK AND LIVES OF FRANCIS DANBY, JAMES ARTHUR O'CONNOR, AND GEORGE PETRIE